Title: Sorceress Succession, unfinished since launch.

Family Name: Merlyn

Region: World

It seems like the latest buffs for succession are leaving the class still gutted in many shapes and forms. The only positive of the last patch is the fact that we now have some more mobility [still asthmatic, don't get me wrong], but Awa still outclasses us with having an extra skill in the form of Shadow Leap to spam every 5s for free. In the latest patches, the additions of SA to Omen, Shard Explosion, and Hellfire have all trickled down to Awa, while on our end we've gotten changes that mess with muscle memory established for years - especially in the form of Crow Flare being our signature budget Q block.

- Revert Prime: Crow Flare protection from Super Armor to Frontal guard.

- Revert Prime: Shadow Eruption protection from Frontal Guard to Super Armor. or/and Add Superarmor toPrime: Turn-Back Slash.

- Move +Magic Accuracy from Prime: Shadow Kick to Prime: Shadow Eruption.

- Move -20 DP fromPrime: Rushing Crow  toPrime: Black Wave.

- Move +Evasion fromPrime: Flow of Darkness to Prime: Rushing Crow. 

- Rework the AoE on Prime: Bloody Calamary

- Copy / paste what you did for Tamer and other classes ages ago.

Before :P

After :P

Revisit AoE on Every Skill except: Prime: Bloody Calamary, Prime: Dream of doom, Prime: Black Wave, and make sure we reach the entire pack on every grindspot that you've designed in the game.

Revisit Movement Distance, Animation Speed, Stamina Cost & Regen Lock on to create a combination so that we're competetive in chasing in PvP and we reach packs as fast and as efficiently as other classes in PvE.

Please don't forget us for a year+ again.

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Pertinent changes that need to happen (above included) so that life can come back to succession sorc again. 

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Prime: Crow Flare

- Change protection [back] from Super Armor to Frontal Guard.

Note: Huh? A class is asking a 2s CD skill to go from FG to SA, what the h&ck, right? Well.. yeah, because this was our Q-Block, and now we don't have one at all.

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Prime: Black Wave

- Change input from "S+LMB+RMB After Absolute Darkness/ Ultimate:Dark Flame" to "S+LMB+RMB" or "S+RMB".

- Move -20 DP from Prime: Rushing Crow  toPrime: Black Wave.

Note: This skill [as many others] has a conditional cast after other skills and often desyncs our inputs and causes us to cast Prime: Dark Flame instead of Black wave. This is an easy fix to a completely unnecessary conditions for casting - especially since Dark Flame can be cast on cooldown and a desync input can cause us to start casting an unprotected skill in the middle of a tense situation. Also, it makes no sense to have the DP buff tied to a movement skill with one of the worst aoes in the game.

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Prime: Rushing Crow

- Removed -20 DP on hit. [Moved to Wave].

- Move +3% Evasion from Flow of Darkness toPrime: Rushing Crow.

Note: Reasoning to move the -DP debuff is above [under Prime: Black Wave]. The fact that our Evasion buff is tied to an unprotected skill that costs 100(!!) stamina, while Awakening gets an extra iFrame with a 5s skill for their evasion buff is just plain ol' b....s.

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Prime: Shadow Eruption

- Change protection [back] from Frontal Guard to Super Armor.

- Move +6% Accuracy from Prime: Shadow Kick to Prime: Shadow Eruption.

Note: We don't have a single SA cc after the latest changes. This was our only one. No, standing in place to cast Abyssal Flame does not count. Also, we are one of the only classes [left] that have its Accuracy/Eva/CritRate buffs tied to unprotected skills - just why?

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Succession:Ultimate:Shadow Eruption

- Reduce cooldown from 9s to 7s.

Note: If this skill matches Shadow Eruption's cd it can become a staple in PvE and Pvp combos, now it's once per rotation - just why? If neccessary - remove KD we already have so many unprotected ccs anyway.

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Prime: Shadow Kick

- Removed +6% accuracy on cast. [Moved to Shadow Eruption]

- Kick now teleports you behind your target on hit. Nullified during cooldown.

Note: Accuracy needs to be protected. You already have the tech for the kick in the previous class reboot Global Labs patches - fetch it and bring it back.

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Storming Crow

- Increased Casting Speed

- iFrame in Pve

Note: Currently an immense risk in PvP given its long telegraphed-UNCANCELABLE animation. It would become usefull both for awa and succ if it became a pve iframe and would greatly benefit from being faster and cancelable with other skills or iframe on W+W S+S A+A D+D.

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Shard Explosion

- Changed input to Shift+Q/Shift+C/W+E/W+Q/S+Q/Shift+RMB.

- Increased Projectile Speed

Either or both:

- Remove the Shard cost or

- Reduce Cooldown from 30s to 13s.

Note: If any of the inputs interfere with Awakening Playstyle, they can just opt to lock the skill and still cast it from quickslot - problem solved. The shard cost (emptying the entire reserve of 4 potential iframes in one cast) and 30s cooldown make the skill meh, a glorified superarmor projectile with lackluster damage that travels at the pace of a snail.

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Flow of Darkness

- Removed+3% Evasion on Cast. [Moved to Rushing Crow].

Note: This skill needs to be redesigned to be useful, or have its buff moved to an appropriate skill and locked into oblivion.

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 Prime: Bloody Calamary

- Change Input from "Space during certain skills" to Shift+C or Shift+Q.

Note: You can leave the input to be Space on the Absolute version so that Awakening utility can remain the same - but succ needs to be changed to one of its unused inputs. If the input is changed, it will also allow the skill to smoothly transition into every other skill while it's currently limited to almost every other skill or causing us to hop mid-combat if we get really unlucky.

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Prime: Dark Flame >  Succession:Ultimate: Dark Flame

- Remove the ability to cast both skills on cooldown.

- Speed up the skill animation on both skills.

- Added "60 Burning Damage inflicted every 3 seconds for 9 seconds".

Note: Shouldn't be castable on CD since it brings no value in Dmg/Buffs or anything - just mixes in casting Black Wave. Both skills also so so so slooooooow for a skill that offers no reward whatsoever. The skill is called Dark Flame - yet among 3 different "flame" skills we don't have any burn...

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Prime: Abyssal Flame

- Added "60 Burning Damage inflicted every 3 seconds for 9 seconds".

- Added new skill cancels after P:Black Wave, P:Bloody Calamity, P:Shadow Eruption, Succession:Ult:Shadow Eruption, P:Dark Flame, S:U:Dark Flame, P:Darkness Released, P:Shard Explosion

Note: The lack of the aforementioned skill cancellations is just another nail in the coffin on how unfinished succession is. The skill is called Abyssal F l a m e - yet among 3 different "flame" skills we don't have any burn...

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Prime: Turn-Back Slash

- Add new skill cancelations: C or S+C to cast after P:Rushing Crow, P:Shadow Eruption,P:Claws of Darkness,P:Darkness Released

- Add Super Armor.

- Increase Aoe.

Note: The lack of the aformentioned skill cancelations makes the skill seem unfinished. Super armor was already added in one of the global lab patches, and it's an appropriate buff to the class. Also, why is its AoE so much smaller than it's awakening counterpart?

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Prime: Violation

- Added complete control of Violation's movement to keyboard. Pressing C only spins you in place. You always face where your camera is looking and can beyblade around with a keyboard (like Zerker).

- Increased AoE

- Increased Movement Distance

Note: Changing how we move with the skill would completely match the current skill animation (since we aint spinning with a scythe) and would also give Succ distinguishing tech as opposed to Awakening. This is currently available with "Movement by Mouse", it shouldn't be advanced tech. Also, why are its movement distance and aoe less than Awakening?

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Dark Tendris

- Aiming Dark Tendrils is now possible with camera movement.

- Removed "S+E during Abyssal Flame or Black wave to perform attack 2 instantly".

Note: This is currently possible with mouse to move. Especially with the skill's [nerf] change to Frontal Guard, this is more pertinent than ever. The inputs are also severely unfinished, as we can press Lmb to perform the second attack instantly if we wanted to.

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Prime: Abyssal Vanguard

- Fragments created increased from x30 to x40

- Removed Critical Hit Rate 100% for 30s.

- Added +AP or Crit Dmg or Evasion or DP

Note: Fragment generation should go up to 40, its 30 from an Era when we used to have a max of 30 shards. Crit Rate is completely useless for us with the removal of Special Evasion and it should be replaced with something useful.

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Prime: Agent of Abyss

- Removed Max Mp +200

- Added HP +200 or Ignore Resistance 10%.
- Increased Max stamina from +100 to +250-500

Note: Our Class passive currently is mana (useless) and 100 stamina (an iframe costs 250). Cool beanz.

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Sinister Omen

- Change "Using Dream of Doom, Bloody Clamity, or Cartian's Nightmare within the area will hasten omen's manifestation." to "Using Dream of Doom, Prime: Dream of Doom, Bloody Calamity, Prime: Bloody Calamity, Prime: Black Flame or Cartian's Nightmate within the area within the area will hasten omen's manifestation."

- Possibly, change use to decrease cooldown instead of increasing casting speed.

- Change input to Any of those bellow or add any of the other available sub-inputs (ie. "Press shift+rmb after..") to add cancelations after succession skills.

Note: Currently, Succession Skills do not hasten its casting speed, and Awakening gets 3 skills to speed it up - while we [allegedly] get 2. Add Black Wave to it and make sure Prime Skills increase the speed 1-to-1 as Awakening. It would also be more useful to decrease the cooldown instead of the explosion speed, since in PvP the Movement speed slow is more useful than the damage / Knockback / Heal. Again, as with other things sorc related, this skill was designed without taking Succession in mind.

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Prime: Shadow Leap *New Skill*

- Just copy awakening Shadow Leap.

Note: This is great utility that is given to awakening to both utilize in movement & protection in both Pvp and Pve, and it's on a 5s cooldown. We do not have anything remotely resembling it.

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Prime: Nightmare *New Skill*

- Just copy awakening Nightmare.

Note: This is great utility that is given to awakening to both utilize in movement & protection in both Pvp and Pve, and it's on a 20s to 1 min cooldown. We do not have anything remotely resembling it.

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Night Crow

- Make it to be no longer affected by movement/casting speed buffs.

- Add skill cancelations for W+Shift+Space after all Succession and Awakening skills.

Note: The casting speed increases causes 90% of desyncs on both sorc specs, both in pvp and pve, and slowing it down would both solve it and reign in Awa and Succession a little bit. Currently the skill is only cancelable with a single skill in succession and several in awakening, why is it so?

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Overall notes on class problems.

For the record, all of the following inputs on Succession are not used at all, which is further proof as to how unfinished the class is.

Shift+Q
Shift+C
W+E
W+Q
S+Q

To compound this..

S+F and W+F are the same skill, just unnecessary conditions.

W+LMB is 2 different skills, depending on the conditions. S+LMB can sometimes cast one of the W+LMB skills too in a specific chain (cus why not?)

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All of the following skills have suspicious-to-no utility in the game:

Flow of Darkness [Costs stamina?!]

Absolute:Sinister Evergy

Absolute: Absolute Darkness [Useful more for Awa players in a quick slot]

Succession: Beak Kick [No protection for -Eva and an air smash?]

Absolute: Shadow Kick [If Accuracy is moved to Shadow Eruption, then it becomes a high-risk CC not worth it when we have better tools]

Storming Crow [Great way to get tele-grabbed. Might become usefull in pve if pve iframe is added]

Dark Trade [If CD and SA linger aren't there, it's a 25s semi-risk skill to refresh shards or get desync>cced in the gap it has in its SA]

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Note: Wow, you reached the bottom and possibly read something, thank you. If you think this is a lot of changes for a class that seems oppressive to you [in pvp], use the tag period to try it out and see what I mean when I say the class is extremely unfinished and unpolished. It's like a barebones skeleton of other classes with the most clear cookie-cutter set you can put in this game. Apart from its riz, it has no specific identity as a class but it at least used to have the best possible skill-stat-animation combinations you can imagine [super armor KD, spamable long range unprotected high dmg skill, free shard regeneration on skill use instead of hit] and it slowly got even all of those perks ripped out left into what it is today. So this wall of text above is not something that would make this class S Tier, nor finished, but rather would bring it to the AAA quality of the 40+ other AAA quality specs in the game in regards to skill flows and class feel.

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Beyond that, Pearl Abyss seriously needs to reconsider the identity of this class away from "gets to cast Shards of Darkness for free while casting skills" - this should be tech that should be implemented for Awakening too so that we eliminate the need to stand still to buff up [unprotected] to get our basic AP buff to bring our stats to the NORM of the game. Ideally, it would either go in the direction of Evasion/Protection Shred or become the first proper debuff/DoT monkey of the game.

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They also really need to finish other skills, such as Succession: Beak Kick and all of the Absolutes into something useful for succession - they are currently just wasted input options for other skill cancelations.

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Again, thank you for reading to the bottom, and always remember - Succession Sorceress is not Awakening Sorceress.

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